FOI release

Door supervisor prosecutions and complaints about licence renewal delays

Updated 3 October 2023

1. Request

• From 2010 to 2022, the number of prosecutions brought against unlicensed door supervisors who have never been previously licensed
• From 2010 to 2022, the number of prosecutions brought against unlicensed door supervisors who were prosecuted whilst in the process of renewing an expired licence
• From 2021 to 2023, the number of prosecutions brought against unlicensed door supervisors who:
  • were prosecuted whilst in the process of renewing an expired licence, and
  • had completed top up requirements
• From 2021 to 2023, the number of prosecutions brought against unlicensed door supervisors who:
  • were prosecuted whilst in the process of renewing an expired licence, and
  • had completed top-up successfully as well as the application process but were waiting for top-up results to be uploaded to the SIA
• From 2021 to 2023, the number of investigations against door supervisors who:
  • were suspected of being unlicensed whilst in the process of renewing an expired licence, and
  • had completed top-up successfully as well as the application process but were waiting for top-up results to be uploaded to the SIA
• Between 2010 and 2022, the number of complaints made against the SIA for licence renewal delays in which the complainant alleged the delays to be the fault of the SIA
• Between 2010 and 2022, the number of compensation claims for loss of earnings made by licence holders as a result of time delays in the SIA process of renewing a person’s licence. This should include:
  • the total number of claims made
  • the total number of successful claims and amount of compensation in each case
• Between 2010 and 2022, the number of prosecutions for unlicensed door supervisors which:
  • resulted in acquittal in court
  • were discontinued or withdrawn

2. Response

I can confirm that the SIA holds some of this information.

In line with the SIA retention schedules, information pertaining to prosecutions is held for a period of 7 years and therefore we can only provide information between 2016 and 2023 which we aware goes beyond the end of the timeframe for some of your requests.

Answers to your questions are provided below.

Figures given for prosecutions relate solely to those brought by the SIA. This does not provide a complete picture of the number of section 3 PSIA 2001 prosecutions, as other agencies are able to prosecute these offences (such as the Crown Prosecution Service, Procurator Fiscal and the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland).

In regards to your questions about our investigations into/prosecutions of individuals “in the process of renewing an expired licence”, I can confirm that an expired licence cannot be renewed. Once an SIA licence has expired, an applicant will have to submit a new application for a licence. A renewal is only possible when an applicant has an active licence and they apply to renew that licence whilst that licence is still active.

I can also confirm that for the purposes of your request and the answers provided, we have interpreted any questions containing “renewing an expired licence” as meaning a renewal application and not a new application.

2.1 Prosecutions of individuals not previously licensed

From 2016 to 2022 a total of 63 prosecutions were brought by the SIA against unlicensed door supervisors who were never previously licensed.

2.2 Prosecutions of individuals in the process of renewing a licence

From 2016 to 2022 a total of 2 prosecutions were brought by the SIA against unlicensed door supervisors who were prosecuted whilst in the process of renewing a licence.

2.3 Prosecutions and investigations: renewals and top-up training

For questions 3,4 and 5 while the SIA holds this information, it is not easily retrievable, and we would have to interrogate each prosecution file and licensing account to determine whether they were in the process of renewing their licence and had completed top-up requirements between 2021 and 2023.

I can confirm that this part of the email will constitute a refusal to deal with numbers 3, 4 and 5 of your request for the reasons I will set out below.

Exceeding the Appropriate Cost Limit

Section 12(1) – (4) of the Freedom of Information Act allows a public authority to refuse to deal with a request where it estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to comply with the request in its entirety or to confirm or deny whether the requested information is held. In the case of a public authority such as the SIA, the appropriate cost limit is £450.

The ICO guidance The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 sets out how a public authority should estimate whether the work required to obtain information is reasonable and appropriate. In the case of requests that would require work on the part of public authority staff, this is estimated at a rate of £25 per person per hour. This means that 18 hours is considered the appropriate limit.

Reporting limitations within the database where, information on prosecutions and investigations against door supervisors who were suspected of being unlicensed whilst in the process of renewing their expired licence who had also completed top up licence linked training, but were waiting for their results to be uploaded between 2021 and 2023, is held means that the information the statistics cannot instantly be isolated and retrieved.

What information can we provide?

For each case relating to this specific search remit, each one would need to be manually interrogated to retrieve the information you have requested. We would also need to search a number of different locations within our systems to obtain this data, which significantly adds to the time and cost limit. To consider each case over the two-and-a-half-year period, would significantly exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours and appropriate cost limit of £450.

Next steps

In order to better facilitate your request, I suggest that you limit the scope of your request, so that we can manually search each case until the appropriate cost limit is reached. Given that this will be a very time intensive exercise to manually look at each case and filter out those that match this niche criteria, I would ask that you limit your search to a particular month within the period that you are interested in.

The SIA will search as many cases as possible up to the appropriate cost limit within this reduced timeframe. If we are able to search the case well within the appropriate cost limit, we will get in touch and request that you provide us with details of a further month that you would like to be searched.

I would be grateful if you could confirm your position in respect of this section of your FOI request and whether you would like assistance in trying to refine the scope of your request.

2.4 Complaints made against the SIA for licence renewals delays

The SIA holds information relating to complaints made in respect of licensing delays. This data only includes complaints that met our definition of a complaint, which is:

any expression of dissatisfaction with what we do that cannot be dealt with quickly or easily by our customer support team (by ‘quickly and easily’ we mean where a specific issue can be put right straight away, and you have no further issues or concerns).

Prior to March 2021 we only logged the main cause of a complaint. This means that where the complaint related to another issue primarily but also contained a complaint in respect of licensing delays, this information would not have been logged.

From April 2021 to December 2021, we were not able to log the cause of a complaint due to a system change meaning the data shows all cases where delays in processing licensing applications have been mentioned as an issue.

From December 2021 onwards we have been logging all causes of each complaint, meaning the data shows a full picture which includes complaints about delays.

Financial year	Complaints about delays to applications
April 2023 - present	154
April 2022 - March 2023	395
April 2021 - March 2022	55
April 2020 - March 2021	69
April 2019 - March 2020	141
April 2018 - March 2019	268
April 2017 - March 2018	394
April 2016 - March 2017	118

2.5 Compensation claims for loss of earnings

As with the complaints data above, this table includes all applications as we do not collect data explicitly on the time delays of a renewal licence application.

Year	Claims made	Successful claims	Total money paid
2021-2022	6	3	£3,552.97
2020-2021	6	4	£9,383.88
2019-2020	4	1	£857.74
2018-2019	2	1	£1,440
2017-2018	2	0	Nil
2016-2017	35	3	£3,460

2.6 Prosecutions discontinued, withdrawn or resulting in acquittal

Please see the table below. If there is no description beside the year, it is because the case as a whole was withdrawn or discontinued, or the defendant was acquitted.

Status	Total number	Year and description
Acquittals	2	1 in 2022; 1 in 2017
Discontinued / Offering no evidence	1	1 in 2019
Discontinued and acquitted	2	1 in 2018 (prosecution discontinued in respect of 1 of the charges; defendant was acquitted in respect of 5 charges and found guilty of 1 of the charges); 1 in 2019 (1 charge was discontinued and for the other charges the defendant was acquitted)
Withdrawn	5	1 in 2022 (1 of the charges was withdrawn and the defendant is awaiting trial in respect of other charges); 1 in 2019; 1 in 2018 (1 of the charges was withdrawn and of remaining 3 charges, the defendant plead guilty); 1 in 2018 (1 of the charges was withdrawn and of the remaining 2, the defendant plead guilty); 1 in 2016

[Reference: FOI 0435]